Criminological research has explored the challenges that incarceration poses to romantic relationships, but less is known about partners who have abandoned efforts to sustain these relationships. In this article, I explore narratives of relationship dissolution among former partners of incarcerated (or formerly-incarcerated) men. Through inductive analyses of 603 posts across 23 threads on Virtual Support for Prisoners (VSP)—a pseudonymous online prisoner support forum—I describe how VSP members position their former partners as morally inferior men inhabiting dark spaces of despair, while framing themselves as harbingers of light into these spaces. These findings reveal how prisons (and people who are confined within them) influence—and are imagined by—those outside prison.

中文翻译：

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影与光：囚徒前伴侣关系解体的网络叙事

犯罪学研究探索了监禁对浪漫关系构成的挑战，但对放弃维持这些关系的努力的伴侣知之甚少。在本文中，我探讨了被监禁（或以前被监禁）男性的前伴侣之间关系破裂的叙述。通过对囚犯虚拟支持 (VSP)（一个化名在线囚犯支持论坛）上 23 个帖子中的 603 个帖子进行归纳分析，我描述了 VSP 成员如何将他们的前伴侣定位为居住在绝望黑暗空间中的道德低等人，同时将自己定位为光进入这些空间。这些发现揭示了监狱（以及被关在监狱内的人）如何影响监狱外的人，并被他们想象。